Russians Very Much Aware Unemployment is Rising, Whatever Kremlin Says, New VTsIOM Survey Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – The VTsIOM polling agency says that Russians are now more aware of rising unemployment in their country than they have been at any point since the beginning of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. If this trend continues, the Agents portal says, “it will deprive the Russian authorities of one of their favorite arguments” that the economy is doing well.

            Polling agencies like the Kremlin-linked VTsIOM, the portal reports, have regularly compiled data on what they call “the unemployment index,” a metric that is based on surveys which ask Russians whether they know anyone among their circles who is out of a job (agents.media/rossiyane-stolknulis-s-dovoennym-urovnem-bezrabotitsy/).

            “In April,” it says, VTsIOM found that “the share of Russians reporting that four or more of their relatives or acquaintances in their social circles had lost their jobs rose to seven percent, up from five percent in March. Another 17 percent reported that one to three of their acquaintances had been left without work, compared to 16 percent the month before.”

            While nearly two-thirds continued to say that no one near them had lost a job, “the index, which reflets the difference between positive and negative responses to the question ‘How many people among your close relatives and acquaintance have lost their jobs over the last two to three  months’ rose by five percentage point in one month and reached an all-time high” since 2022.

            In posting these figures on its telegram channel, VTsIOM analysts suggested that “we may be witnessing the first signs of a reversal in the labor market which for the past four years has suffered from an excessively low supply of available labor.” If that is the case, then the Russian economy is doing worse and firms are shedding workers faster than officials admit.